Silver, in his harshest attack of the year on Pataki, warned that “the budget delay will go on forever, if the governor doesn’t get engaged.”

“He is not working at doing what has to be done for the state,” Silver (D-Manhattan) charged in an interview with The Post.

“He’s not at his workstation at the governor’s desk in the Capitol. He spent an hour in Albany all last week.

“Bringing about a budget for the state of New York is his No. 1 responsibility, but it appears he has no interest in the budget and seems to want to be any place but Albany.”

Pataki spokesman Michael McKeon responded that he was “sure the speaker is frustrated that the governor refuses to allow him to go on a spending binge and refuses to be dragged behind closed doors for a ‘three-men-in-a-room budget.’

“I’m sure he’s frustrated that Sen. [Joseph] Bruno’s conference committee has brought a new spotlight on the speaker’s refusal to negotiate in the open,” McKeon said.

Pataki, who has spent little time at the Capitol in recent months, proposed a record-high, $83.6 billion state budget in January.

Since then, Pataki has contended his job is largely done, a reversal of his position during his first years in office that he would follow past practice and work to get a final budget approved.

This is the 17th year in a row that New York has missed the April 1 deadline to get its budget approved.

Silver, meanwhile, has called for spending $2 billion more than proposed by Pataki, with most of the new spending going for education and health care.

Bruno (R-Rensselaer), the Senate majority leader and Pataki’s most important legislative ally, backed hiking the governor’s budget plan by at least $1 billion.

But progress on the state budget has been nonexistent for weeks, and some lawmakers, including Bruno, predict the budget will surpass the Aug. 4 record for lateness.

Silver, once Pataki’s sharpest critic in the Capitol, has had good relations with the governor in recent years as the state’s flush treasury permitted massive spending increases for many of the Democrats’ favored programs.

Relations worsened this year as Silver accused Pataki of trying to squirrel away billions of dollars in extra revenues in hopes of having them available for politically popular spending programs next year, when he is expected to seek re-election.